The Arts In Berwick -- Visual Arts -- Painting
Pictures of Berwick Folk

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Part of the picturesque agenda for influential critics, was to get artists to recreate the genre pictures of the 17th century Dutch masters. The Scots artist David Allan, whose pictures decorated the "Gentle Shepherd" jug now in the Borough Museum, was one whose work ran more towards this aspect than heroic storm scenes.

One of his pupils, Alexander Carse (1770-1843), was, like his master, an acute observer of everyday life. In 1799 Carse illustrated Dr John Fuller's History of Berwick which recounted the town's prosperity to the outside world. At that time fast sailing boats brought the latest London goods, news and fashions to Berwick within 48 hours.

Carse's best known picture, "The Visit of the Country Relations" (1812), now at Bowhill house, shows prosperous townies in Jane Austen fashions being visited by their self-conscious rustic relatives. It is easy to imagine Carse's scene being played out behind the elegant facades he drew for Fuller's book. Allan and Carse both helped shape the work of the most popular Scottish painter of his day David Wilkie (1785-1841). Wilkie in turn had a huge influence on contemporary artists, not least on Berwick's best-known artist of the time, Thomas Sword Good (1789-1872).